Formica

ARTICLES ABOUT FORMICA BY DATE - PAGE 4

By Patricia Leigh Brown, New York Times News service | November 24, 1991

The fake has a special niche in American culture. From toupees to vinyl siding, from Las Vegas to synthetic fingernails, we are a nation that exults in the "faux" as much as the "beaux." Our penchant for fake things that look real, and fake things that look fabulously fake, is manifested in a once-miraculous material that has become so ubiquitous as to be almost invisible. Even its name, Formica, proclaims its status as a great pretender: It made its debut in 1913 as a substitute for mica.

As the kitchen continues to become more of the heart of the home, kitchen countertops are getting their fair share of attention. "Today, people are very choosy about the types of countertops they want in their kitchen," says Welton Pryor, owner of General Countertops, a cabinet and countertop maker in Chicago. "They know that they will have to live with the choice they make for quite some time. Countertops have become a big part of the kitchen." Countertops, often the focal point of the room, are updated for a number of reasons.

Playing for laughs Lauren joked that her aunts once told her never to spend her principal. Everyone chuckled. She added that one of these aunts once declared that new furniture is bought only by people who don`t have family. Laughter all around. Another aunt was quoted as saying that God made accountants so that "ladies" didn`t have to balance their checkbooks. This was a real knee slapper. I was miserable by the time the meeting ended. It wasn`t the silly pretentiousness of it, but rather that I was confronted by something I`d suspected but had managed to avoid.

Formica Corp. approved a revised merger agreement with a management-led investor group that will pay about $365 million in cash for the laminated products company. The $19-a-share bid by FM Acquisition Corp. includes the assumption of Formica debt. Formica announced Monday that it rejected an $18.75-a-share, $243 million takeover offer from FM Acquisition, one of several offers made for the company in recent months.

Formica Corp. said an unidentified industrial company wants to buy it for about $259 million, $29 million more than a management group is offering. Formica asked Shearson Lehman Hutton Holdings Inc. to start talks with the unnamed industrial company, but said there can be no assurance that an agreement will result. The management group, FM Acquisition Corp., also announced that it was extending its $18-a-share tender offer for Formica to March 31. The offer was due to expire Friday.

It's hard to believe, but Formica, with a capital F, is 76 years old. The first and best-known of the plastic laminates that cover so many surfaces today was invented in 1913 to serve as an electrical insulator. (It was meant to replace the brittle mica used for that purpose, hence the name "for mica.") In 1927 the company began lithographing images on it, making the utilitarian material decorative. By the early 1930s, Formica brand laminate and another glamorous new product, aluminum, were insignias of the art deco movement, adorning such lavish settings as Radio City Music Hall.

Having exploited the `50s for all they were worth (and then some), restaurant marketing in Chicago has taken yet another giant step backward-this time to the 1940s. Just opened at 901 N. Rush St. is Johnny Rockets, a diner (or is it "diner concept?") that's already made it big on the West Coast and in Atlanta by harking back to the days of World War II. (A second location at Clark and Deming will soon follow.) For one pre-opening party, the proper sartorial ambience was provided by couples from a local World War II re-enactment society, who looked quite crisp in their government-issue khakis.

It's hard to believe, but Formica, with a capital F, is 75 years old. The first and best-known of the plastic laminates that cover so many surfaces today was invented in 1913 to serve as an electrical insulator. (It was meant to replace the brittle mica used for that purpose, hence the name "for mica.") To celebrate the 75th anniversary, Formica Corp. has reissued its most popular pattern from the 1950s-Boomerang. It was a massively popular pattern at the time, one that will probably be recognized by anyone old enough to remember the `50s, when it was found in kitchens, bathrooms, diners and even on amoeba-shaped coffee tables.

Seven years ago, a Chicago photographer changed Suzanne Bucher's life. Bucher, a jewelry artist, was having some of her metal jewelry photographed for a promotion at the Apparel Mart. When she saw the pictures, she was struck with the background the photographer had provided: a sleek, glossy sheet of Formica decorated with a geometric pattern. Like most people, Bucher previously had known Formica only as a rugged countertop material. But when she did some research on the plastic laminate, she found its artfulness alluring.